At the American Alpine Club Library, we’re very fortunate to have quite a few collections of photographs of climbing and mountaineering from the early 20th century. One of these, a collection of roughly 3000 photographic negatives dating from 1900 to about 1930, has been digitized in its entirety and made available to everyone.

It’s a great feeling to complete a project.

We’re excited to be able to increase access to this collection through digitization, which also reduces wear and tear on the original negatives and adds an additional layer of preservation.

This collection of photos belonged to Andrew J. Gilmour, a dermatologist living and working in New York who was an avid climber and active member of the American Alpine Club during the 1920s and 1930s. He did a number of ascents in the Alps, the Canadian Rockies, the Cascades and the Western U.S., as well as Wales and the Lake District in the UK. His photos show us a lot about climbing at that time, the techniques, equipment, conditions and the people and places involved. It also provides us with a glimpse of what the world was like about 100 years ago.

We’ve gathered some of our favorite images from this collection in the slideshows below. Enjoy!

Equipment

Hemp rope, ice axes and glacier goggles. These two climbers are also wearing puttees (leg wraps).

A. J. Gilmour models his sleeping bag

Ice axes and women’s pre-1925 climbing attire.

A striped canvas tent

Men’s climbing outfit.

Tricouni nails - a type of hobnails developed in the 1920’s

Hobnailed boots

Hobnails

Summits

Men and women on top

A woman summits in the Alps

The summit of Mount Sir Donald

A climbing group summiting Victoria Ridge in Alberta.

Men and women on the summit of Mount Victoria

The summit of Mount Edith Cavell

Men and women celebrating at the summit of Resplendent Mountain

A man and woman celebrating on a summit.

Men and women on the summit

Camps and Huts

Huge camps for gatherings with the Alpine Club of Canada, tents and lean-tos in the woods, Swiss Alpine Club huts - many of which are still in use today.

Dossenhütte and Gstellihorn in the background in the Swiss Alps

The steps of an Alpine hut

A hut in the Alps

A lean-to in the forest

Camp in the woods - it was common to use small trees and logs as tent poles

Camp near Cathedral Peak - the large open tent is a mess tent

A trapper’s cabin

Campers gathering in a mess tent

A camp in the Canadian Rockies

A mess tent and a large group of people around a campfire under US and Canadian flags

Morning in camp

Travel

It was harder in those days to get to some of these remote locations. There were far fewer roads, almost no highways and air travel was still in its infancy. Trains, ships and horses were commonly used.

Miss Candace Hewitt arrives in Jasper to climb Resplendent Mountain.

Before the invention of traffic lights, you might have seen men with a sign at busy intersections

The climbing party fording a river on horses, there were fewer roads and cars were less reliable, so travel by horse was common

On horseback in the Tonquin Valley, Canada

Collision between a train and a car

In the first decades of the 20th century, highways were still very new. Most long distance travel was done by train.

A photo taken from the roof of a train car

Early automobiles

Travel by airplane was uncommon before the 1930’s and only a few very wealthy people flew commercially. Most international travel was done by ship.

A crowd on Pier 59 in New York City where ships arrived or left

A cable ferry taking packages across a river

Life and Times

The world has changed a lot since 1900 - these photos illustrate just a few of the differences.

The Margate Cutting in the UK - ladies in corsets and with parasols were the norm

Turn of the last century men’s fashion

Bathing machines at Margate Beach - these carts were rolled into the sea with horses and served to allow women to preserve their modesty when swimming

No cars drive on this road, instead it’s only horse-drawn carriages at the Margate clock tower.

A man winding an armature

An epic moustache photographed through a huge spool of wire

Sledding accident

The Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris - very similar to a World’s Fair, but art nouveau themed.

A barbecue in Cody Wyoming

As we’ve mentioned before, women climbed in their dresses.

Places

Some gorgeous photos of some famous locations as they used to be.

A view of the Matterhorn from the Kulmhotel Gornergrat prior to observatories being installed.